<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Game **Test Piece** by Snugglebuttkitten</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30093474">The Game **Test Piece**</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snugglebuttkitten/pseuds/Snugglebuttkitten'>Snugglebuttkitten</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Miraculous Ladybug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, F/M, Virtual Reality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:20:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,302</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30093474</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snugglebuttkitten/pseuds/Snugglebuttkitten</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <strong>Welcome to THE GAME. Congratulations, you have come of age and your chip has been activated. You will now be entered as a GREEN. Your gloves give you the ability to tag. This will leave a permanent mark on your opponent. Don't get tagged. Your goal is to tag TEN THOUSAND players to reach GOLD STATUS. This will grant you immunity from the other Players, and allow you to live in PEACE and HARMONY. But until then, watch out for the BLUES. Blues are the most dangerous of Players, for they have a TIME LIMIT. Once their time runs out, they are ELIMINATED. If you happen to be Tagged, THE GAME will offer you two options. Become a RED and forever serve THE GAME, or try your luck as a BLUE. It is your choice. Get ready, Player, for THE GAME will commence in three, two, one... YOU'RE IT.</strong>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Game **Test Piece**</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Based off <a href="https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeB2yh2W/">This</a> TikTok Video. All rights go to original creators.</p><p>This isn't quite as good as I would like but because it's a test piece I'll leave it as is. Depending on interest I might write a full story but I plan to develop the world a bit more first.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Eight hundred and sixty five days. Two years, four months, and fifteen days. Why did it feel like it had been so much longer than that? Why did it feel like a lifetime had passed since the carefree days when she had sat on a couch in the real world, lounging with her family and laughing while they watched silly sitcoms, or arguing techniques as they watched episodes of Chopped? Had it really been less than three years? Marinette sighed, long and hard as she fell back against the crumbling half wall that partitioned off part of the roof she stood on, keeping her hidden from prying eyes. She was tired. Even though she was technically in a virtual reality world, she felt the exhaustion deep in her bones as if the whole weight of the world was resting on shoulders far too fragile to carry it. Was this how Bridgette had felt, before she had… shaking her head abruptly, Marinette shoved those thoughts as far from her mind as possible and sealed them away. She could grieve later if she had to, when she was out of this wretched game and back in the loving embrace of her parents. For now, she had a mission. Lifting her right hand, she swiped through the air vertically with her index finger, activating her Player Menu. A few clicks, and she opened up her character stats. A holographic image of her avatar, nearly identical to her IRL form, popped up wearing the Green Uniform they were all assigned when they first entered the Game. Luckily, they were able to change clothes in game. Wearing the same Green Jumpsuit for years on end, even if VR meant no B.O., didn’t sound the least bit pleasant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Above the hologram's head, her current color status was displayed in bold, bright letters. GREEN. Beside the hologram, a list of her physical stats were listed along with her current ranking (2nd Place) and the number of players she had managed to tag: 7,968/10,000. She barely had to pause to do the math. She had been keeping meticulous count since this wretched game began when she was sixteen. Two thousand and thirty two players stood between her and Gold Status. Immunity and a surefire ticket home when the Game ended sounded pretty good right about now. A few more clicks brought up the Global Player Ranking System (GPRS), and she quickly scrolled down until she hit the bottom of the list. Even the lowest ranking member had almost four thousand tags under their belt, though at the rate they were going that could mean another few years stuck in the game even if she reached Gold Status. After all, the game only ended when the final player was either eliminated or achieved Gold. They had originally started the game with maybe a hundred thousand players and only about thirty thousand remained alive and kicking. Almost seventy percent of those players were blue, their countdowns clocked anywhere from a year or less before they, too, became one of the thousands upon thousands who had died in this horrid game. There were only a handful of green players left compared to the start of the game. Most players had either been eliminated (i.e. killed) or they had opted to become Reds. Now that she paused to think about it, it had been quite awhile since she and her band of Merrymen (as they jokingly called themselves, though Guild was likely a more accurate assessment) had run into any Red Players.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Guilds began forming around halfway through the second year of the game, after the initial waves of characters had been effectively wiped out. It was awkward going at first, because tensions among Green Players were always high. This was, after all, a competition. Any number of players could </span>
  <em>
    <span>survive</span>
  </em>
  <span> the game, but only one player could </span>
  <em>
    <span>win</span>
  </em>
  <span> the game and if you were that one person, you could bring back a single person back. That person had to either have been killed or become Red in your Game, or the Game that came before yours. You couldn’t bring back someone who had died a hundred years ago. But most of the kids here had lost someone at some point during the last or current Game. A friend, a sibling, a cousin. For her, it had been her older sister, Bridgette. If she won, she could bring Bridgette back. She could make their family whole again! But still, even with that tension hanging over them most of the Greens recognized that forming guilds was the best way to survive. Banding together gave them a better chance against the Blues and the Reds, and for the most part it worked out well. Some Guilds crumbled when tensions got too high and players began tagging their Guild members. But Marinette’s Guild had been going strong since it had formed almost a year and a half ago, and she had formed some pretty close friendships among her guildmates, despite not being able to touch one another.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were probably wondering where she was, she belatedly realized with a glance up towards the rapidly darkening sky. She had stayed out far later than she intended, and as the sun began to sink the Reds would be coming out in droves. Closing out of the GPRS, she opened the World Map instead and traced her finger from the Cursor that indicated her current location towards the little marker where they had made up their base. Four and a half miles, give or take. She would never make it before night fell. She would be lucky to even make it a mile before that happened. Glancing up at the sky once more, she grimaced. She would have to find somewhere around here to camp out for the night and hope for the best. Shrugging off the wall, Marinette reached down and grabbed the backpack she carried around everywhere. It was good for carrying weapons, as well as gathering supplies while she was out on one of her ‘patrols’ as she liked to call them. Rounding the half wall, Marinette descended the staircase she had used to gain access to the roof in the first place, blinking rapidly to adjust to the darkness of the stairwell. The building looked like it had been some sort of high end fashion company at some point. A glass and steel tower, most of the windows shattered leaving the metal skeleton surprisingly intact, full of offices, work stations, and mannequins half dressed in the tattered remnants of clothing. If not for all the broken windows, it might have been an excellent place to set up a base, but as it currently was it wouldn’t even serve as a suitable place to camp out for the night. Too many entry points to properly defend herself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Making her way down to the ground level, Marinette poked her head out of the stairwell and checked that the lobby was still clear. It was, thankfully, and she swiftly ducked out and made her way towards the shattered glass front of the building. She gingerly stepped through the wreckage, careful of the dagger-like shards of glass still clinging to the frame by a sliver.. Similar skyscrapers in very similar conditions lined the street, interspersed with the occasional coffee shop or boutique. If this had been IRL, she imagined it might have been a really bougie neighborhood where the rich and famous shopped. In another life, maybe this was the type of building she would have worked at, she pondered as she glanced back at the fashion building behind her. She could just barely recall wanting to be a fashion designer in her youth. That dream seemed so far away and unattainable in this hellhole, it was almost laughable. Almost, but not quite. Dreams like that, reminiscing in that way, it was a surefire way to get yourself tagged. So she shook off the moment of nostalgia and set off down the street, eyes constantly roaming for any place that would make a safe and easily protectable location for the night. Broken down cars, their windows blown out and graffiti decorating their bodies, littered the street every few feet or so. None of them worked. They were only there for show. To make this virtual reality feel more like a dystopian world set in some movie based off of some poorly written book.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even if they did work, where would they go? Although she had never tried herself, she had heard stories of kids who had tried to escape by traveling to the farthest reaches of their “world”. Most of them never came back. Those that did had so many different versions of what lay beyond the city limits from great beasts to droves of Red Players to walls of light that instantly zapped Players out of existence… it was impossible to know what was fact and what was fiction. The only theme all of the stories had in common was that trying to escape meant almost certain death. Marinette had opted not to even try and to stick to what she knew: Tagging as many players as she could and evading being tagged herself. As far as she was concerned, there was only one way out of this lion’s den and that was Gold Status. Raking her fingers through her raven-colored hair, Marinette gave another leery look at the sky and immediately grimaced. She was running out of time and none of these shops and skyscrapers offered adequate protection from the monsters that went bump in the night. She needed a residential neighborhood. Comercial wouldn’t do. Why had she gone out this far in the first place? And alone, no less! Adrien was going to rip her a new one once she made it back, if Alya didn’t murder her first for scaring them all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adrien was sort of the unofficial leader of their group. She had been offered the position when they first got the group together, but had declined. Leadership meant lives and responsibilities being placed on her shoulders and she didn’t want to carry the guilt if members of their guild started dropping like flies. Adrien had been the next best choice because he was in fourth place, and the second highest ranking member of their guild. He was a good guy. Sweet, a bit oblivious, and devastatingly handsome, but an all around good guy. Honestly, with how kind-hearted he was, it surprised her to no ends that he had managed to tag nearly seven thousand players in the first place. Adrien could be ruthless when he needed to be, that was for sure, but he had already pointed out that there was no one he wanted to bring back and he was playing to survive, not to win. His goal since they had all banded together had always been to keep them all alive and keep them moving steadily toward Gold Status. Marinette was sure at this point that she had become a constant thorn in his side with her penchant for wandering off alone, without indicating where she was going. Granted, she also had never stayed out so late or strayed so far that getting back before nightfall had ever been an issue either. Alya and Adrien were definitely going to murder her if the Reds’ didn’t catch her first.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just as that thought entered her head, Marinette turned down a side street and spotted a small apartment building sitting seemingly out of place among the skyscrapers and boutiques and cafes surrounding it. Normally she would have taken the time to thoroughly check it out before even considering camping there for the night. She didn’t have time to be picky, however, because the sun was very nearly gone and the Reds’ would be emerging at any moment. Reds could go out during the day, and they did. But they seemed to gather in droves at night, hunting down any unsuspecting player that dared be caught unaware and out in the open once darkness fell. Rushing to the building, Marinette chose a door at random, sliding out one of the bobby pins she kept in her hair for exactly this reason to pick the lock. After over two years of practice, it took her less than a minute and as the sun dipped below the horizon she slipped inside and shut the door with a barely audible click. The silence that followed that small, seemingly insignificant sound was deafening to the point of making her ears ring. Marinette stood in the pitch black apartment, back pressed to the door and hand gripping the doorknob so hard her fingers ached from the pressure as she strained both eyes and ears for any signs the apartment might be occupied. If it was, she was as good as screwed. Regardless of color, if the apartment was occupied her options were pretty bleak. A couple of Reds’ would just immediately rush to tag her. So would a Blue. A Green </span>
  <em>
    <span>might</span>
  </em>
  <span> pause long enough to talk to her, but unaffiliated Greens’ and Greens’ from rival Guilds were almost as unpredictable as Blues, so she didn’t hold much hope on that front. She was almost about to relax, certain the apartment was as empty as it was silent, when an almost imperceptible shift to her left had her lunging right, away from the door. The thud of a body hitting the door had cold dread sliding down her spine and she scrambled to her feet, bracing for the next attack even as she knew there was no escape. But no other attacks came. Only the snick of the deadbolt sliding home and the gusty sigh of relief that came from her would be attacker.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nerves had her eyes rolling rapidly as she tried to adjust to the lack of light, but the darkness in the apartment was absolute. She couldn’t even see her nose let alone the person currently standing between her and her salvation. Fear settled like a boulder in her gut as she awaited the touch of whatever Player (and she was certain it had to be a Player because a Red wouldn’t have locked the door when he could have simply tagged her and been done with it) stood before her. But the silence stretched on and on and on until she felt like she was going to be sick from nerves. She didn’t hear him move, even despite how hard she was straining her ears, but suddenly he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>right there</span>
  </em>
  <span>, close enough to feel his breath fan across her face and see the slight glint of his eyes. Marinette swallowed thickly, a soft whimper escaping her tightly pressed lips, and it was enough to make her potential Tagger take a step back. Still, he didn’t say anything and the silence continued to stretch on long enough that eventually she wondered if he had just left her standing there, untagged. Or maybe he had tagged her and she hadn’t felt it? She hadn’t heard him walk away, but the silence was becoming maddening. She couldn’t take it. Why hadn’t he tagged her? Was he just toying with her? Had he left? She had to know. She had to…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wh-who are you?” She speaks quietly, but her voice sounds cracked and dry as if she hasn’t spoken in years and she has to cough slightly to clear her throat afterward. Her would be Tagger draws in a slow breath and there is a long, pregnant moment devoid of sound and movement and then-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t want to know who I am, Green.” The voice is definitely masculine, as she had suspected, and sounds even gruffer than her own. Unlike hers, she would bet money that was due to lack of use instead of nerves. If he was unaffiliated with a Guild, she doubted he was striking up much conversation with strangers. Especially ones trying to tag him. She swallowed several times and cleared her throat before she felt confident enough to speak again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why haven’t you tagged me, yet?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you have a death wish or something that I should know about?” His voice is dry and almost but not quite amused. Mostly he sounds weary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“N-no, but we aren’t Guildmates. We’re rivals. You </span>
  <em>
    <span>should</span>
  </em>
  <span> want to tag me… right?” She’s confused, her nerves so frayed that she can’t keep from pressing an issue better left alone. The man is quiet for a long moment and then a sigh leaves him and he moves. She flinches back instinctively but he is moving away from her, not toward her, and she eventually allows her tense stance to relax a bit. The snick of a lighter breaks the silence and a flame flickers to life revealing standard issue black gloves. A few candles are lit, illuminating the room just enough that she can make out a couch and two armchairs covered in sheets, a coffee table, and the figure of a young man. Logic tells her he has to be around eighteen or nineteen if he was within the age bracket for the games they had been entered in. He was taller than her, wearing dark wash skinny jeans with the knees strategically ripped, combat boots, and a black hoodie with the hood pulled close around his face. She couldn’t make out any of his features outside of his eyes which were a deep blue, like the color of storm clouds. He was watching her from near the couch, an unfathomable expression on his face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you so keen to be Blue? I can tag you if you really want me to.” She can’t tell for sure because of the darkness, but she has a feeling he is teasing her. Bright white teeth flash briefly as a half smile curves his lips, but the expression is gone almost as soon as it appears and his gaze drifts towards the window to his right instead, a pensive look crossing his face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course not.” She doesn’t mean to sound quite so defensive, but it's been forever since she has had a real conversation with someone outside of her Guild and it leaves her feeling unbalanced and off-kilter, as if the rug could be pulled out from under her feet at any given moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe I’m just tired of all this death, Green,” he sighed, shaking his head before glancing back at her with a small smile. “You’re safe here tonight. I have no plans of turning you Blue.” Marinette hesitated. She should leave. He wasn’t blocking the door anymore. She couldn’t trust this stranger. Then again, her chances in here were still infinitely better than her chances out there. Studying him as best she could in the dimness of the candlelight, she found herself wanting to trust him. She didn’t know why, or what it was about this guy in particular, but at the very least, she genuinely didn’t think he would lie about not wanting to tag her. Why would he? She was trapped between a rock and a hard place. Whether her guard was up or not, tagging her wouldn’t be all that difficult, especially with his greater size and reach.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ma-ma-Marinette,” she stammered, wincing as the old nervous tick she thought she had kicked for good resurfaced. She used to stutter all the time when she was younger but thought the came had cured her of that embarrassing habit. Apparently not as well as she had thought, though. A flash of teeth indicated the young man was smiling at her and while she doubted it was visible in the darkness, her own lips stretched into a small, nervous smile in return.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s nice to meet you Ma-ma-Marinette. You can call me… Luke.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Comment if you want a full story!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>